UCLA Football: Josh Rosen has found a way to fix college athletics

Former UCLA Football player Josh Rosen spoke to Yahoo Sports about a plan to fix college athletics and it is one that could start a conversation and get the ball rolling to have the NCAA “work for all involved parties”.

College athletics is a strange thing. Look at how we obsess over our favorite teams even when the season is over. Even now, we are counting down the days to kickoff (as of July 16, we are 47 days from UCLA football kicking off their season). It is just what we do. Though we love our teams and sports, there is a side that is not so kind, especially when talking about the NCAA.

But like the rest of the world, we need to evolve and that is what former Bruin Josh Rosen has in mind for the NCAA… to evolve.

In an article by Yahoo Sports, Rosen revealed his plan to overhaul the NCAA so that both the organization and the thousands of student-athletes it represents can benefit.

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Rosen has been working on a model with Tye Gonser (a law firm partner at Weinberg Gonser LLP) and Bryan Bitzer (a USC law student) called ‘The Modernization of College Athletics as an Incentive for Graduation‘. The basic premise is to have student-athletes profit from the work they put in during their time in school with compensation coming upon graduation.

Student-athletes could sign up for this program which allows a “Clearinghouse” to act as a licensing representative. This will give student-athletes the chance to make money off of their name and likeness. One thing this could also do is bring back the beloved EA Sports NCAA Football franchise that was discontinued five years ago.

In essence, student-athletes could make money off of everything they put their name on, yet there are a few caveats. These student-athletes will only receive that money if they graduate. They would also forfeit everything if their were deemed ineligible by the NCAA or convicted of a felony.

Beyond that, they would profit from a percentage of money the NCAA makes and receive that after they graduate.

Though it is not a perfect model, as Rosen states, it is something that helps evolve the way the NCAA works with modern student-athletes. With the NCAA raking in a massive amount of cash on a yearly basis, it seems only fair to distribute that to the players that are the ones putting in the work day in and day out.

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Though it might be some time before we see something like this in action, it is a start.